The girls had found a way, chiefly on the tops of "hedges," to the grand rock called Lizard Point. Thither we went, and watched the sunset—a very fine one; then came back through the village, and made various purchases of serpentine from John Curgenven's wife, who was a great deal younger than himself, but not near so handsome or so original.
But a cloud had come over us; it did not, and must not stay—still, there it was for the time. When the last thing at night I went out into the glorious moonlight—bright as day—and thought of the soul who had just passed out of a long and troubled life into the clearness of life eternal, it seemed as if all was right still. Small cares and worries dwindled down or melted away—as the petty uglinesses around melted in the radiance of this glorious harvest moon, which seemed to wrap one round in a silent peace, like the "garment of praise," which David speaks about—in exchange for "the spirit of heaviness."
[DAY THE EIGHTH]
And seven days were all we could allow ourselves at the Lizard, if we meant to see the rest of Cornwall. We began to reckon with sore hearts that five days were already gone, and it seemed as if we had not seen half we ought to see, even of our near surroundings.
"We will take no excursion to-day. We will just have our bath at Housel Cove and then we will wander about the shore, and examine the Lizard Lights. Only fancy, our going away to-morrow without having seen the inside of the Lizard Lights! Oh, I wish we were not leaving so soon. We shall never like any place as we like the Lizard."
It was indeed very delightful. Directly after breakfast—and we are people who never vary from our eight o'clock breakfast, so that we always see the world in its early morning brightness and freshness—we went
"Brushing with hasty steps the dew away,"
along the fields, which led down to Housel or Househole Cove. Before us, clear in the sunshine, rose the fine headland of Penolver, and the green slopes of the amphitheatre of Belidden, supposed to be the remains of a Druidical temple. That, and the chair of Belidden, a recess in the rock, whence there is a splendid view, with various archæological curiosities, true or traditionary, we ought to have examined, I know. But—we didn't do it. Some of us were content to rejoice in the general atmosphere of beauty and peace without minute investigation, and some of us were so eminently practical that "a good bathe" appeared more important than all the poetry and archæology in the world.